Sandforce and HD Tune "roller coaster" issue"

[mauro]

grits,

Thanks for showing you have the same issue.
I have also purchased my drive in nov/2010. Its written on my drive that is was fabricated in oct/2010, so its very recent, just like yours probably is too.

So far, everything indicates that gskill decided to go for some CHEAP LOW QUALITY nands on their recent SSDs. In my opinion, either the nands are bad, or the controller (sandforce) is messed up, and I doubt it is the controller. It is much more likely that gkill decided to ship some low quality nands to us.

Pay attention to every HD Tune bench posted here that has the "roller coaster" effect. In every case, the speed drops to 150MB/s. So this number must mean something. Why our drives are dropping read speeds to 150MB/s ?

What we need here, is some gkill engineer that knows what is going on, to post and give us a clear answer on what is going on with their latest drives, and what is the solution.

[grits]

Crystal Disk Info on new drives and an old drive

Greetings,

mauro,
The problem is probably with the controllers. Both of my drives improve in the free space at the end of the drive.

More info:
These snapshots were taken today. The GSkill drives are only a few weeks old. The Intel drive is two years old and was my old boot drive.





I wonder why the SSDs' life span has dropped 10% already.

I have a RMA'd 60 GB drive coming back today, and I'm going with RAID0 on two 60 GB drives. This will be my second go.

grits

[mauro]

grits,

Your "life left" problem is well know, and it was a firmware issue. when you upgrade to firmware 3.1, you will see "100% health" in crystal disk info or any other utility.

No, this "roller coaster" effect and the read speeds droping to 150MB/s is not related to the data in your ssd, or how full the ssd is. You can bench your ssd with zero data on it, after a secure erase and quick format, and you will still see that "roller coaster" effect. I've tried this.
That is why I don't think the problem is on the controller. Its much more likely that the problem is related to the nands.

Like I said before, we need a gskill engineer to come here, and tell us what is going on, and what the solution is.

[wevsspot]

Is anyone that's experiencing the roller coaster effect running with C1E enabled or any other power saving tweak or cpu throttling technology enabled via the BIOS or software?

What drivers are you guys using for the SATA controller on the motherboard? Intel, Marvell, Microsoft?

[Betao]

Like "mauro" I also live in Brazil and got my Phoenix Pro 60GB about 2 months ago. Perhaps he?s right to state that a crapy ssd bundle was shipped down here. From the very begining it didn?t show all the advertised speeds but as my first ssd, I was quite inexperienced to proper configure it and thought tht?s was ok. I payed US$ 340,00 for it so, quite expensive. Overall is working ok but full speed and this funny roller coaster on HD Tune and HD Tach. Perhaps in the future I?ll go for a more reliable brand.

[GSKILL TECH]

We are investigating this "roller coaster" issue and will post updates as soon as we can.

Thank you for your patience
GSKILL TECH

[grits]

Some background info

Greetings,

wevsspot,
I am running Intel drivers in IDE (v9.1.1.1013).
C1E, Hardware prefetcher, adjacent cache line prefetcher are enabled in BIOS.
The motherboard is a new P6X58D-Premium (latest BIOS).
The OS is Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.
The CPU is a Intel i7 x980 running at 3.74 GHz.

I turned write-caching back on. Performance dropped on the average measurement by 8 GB/s. HD-Tune still produces a roller-coaster graph, but a different profile.

grits

[Wales]

Here in Crystal Disk Mark, I am missing about 60MB/s in sequential and 512k read.
That means I am missing about 30% of its performance.

Looks like your Crystal Disk Mark with the G. Skill released picture is no big different.
I extracted from G.Skill official website.

[mauro]

Wales,

Yes, you are right about Crystal Disk Mark. I haven't seen those benchs from Gskill before, and looks like what I am getting with my phoenix pro 80gb is pretty much what Gskill said I would be getting. So I have to admit that there is no problem with Crystal Disk Mark at least with me. The difference from my result and Gskill's result is really negligible. I want to be as fair as I can, so I say there is no problem in Crystal Disk Mark (at least with me).

BUT, the "roller coaster" effect in HD Tune was NOT predicted by Gskill in their official benchs.
Here is the Gskill advertised result in HD Tune for phoenix pro 80gb:

http://gskill.com/products.php?index=311


And here the Gskill advertised result in HD Tune for phoenix pro 60gb:
http://gskill.com/products.php?index=286


Those Gskill advertised HD Tune results are very different from what a lot of people is getting, including me. A lot of people is getting the "roller coaster" issue, and that comes with a drop in performance too, as you can see below. And I have tried to bench with zero data on the drive, after secure erase and quick format, and it makes no difference, the roller coaster effect is sill there. Note how in EVERY CASE, the read speed drops to ~150MB/s, that must mean something. Something is limiting the read speed to arround 150MB/s on those specific parts of our SSDs.

60gb phoenix pro from grits:


60gb phoenix pro from Ranxerox:


60gb phoenix pro from Betao:


80gb phoenix pro from me:


So the "roller coaster" problem is very evident, and it is clearly there.
We are still waiting for the answer from gskill on this issue and some possible solution for it.

[grits]

RAID0 results with two Phoenix Pro 60 GB

My new Phoenix Pro 60 GB arrived today with the 3.1 firmware already installed. I updated the other drives to 3.1 without any problems.

I set the BIOS default and set-up the RAID0. The tests were taken after I installed the system drivers.




The write speeds are 50% less than they should be. My first RAID0 had a 250 GB/s write speed (before it crashed and burned).

The RAID0 drivers are Windows 7 x64 Intel 8.6.2.1012. For some reason, Windows 7 won't let me update the drivers to 9.6.0.1014. Windows 7 tells me that the previous drivers are already up-to-date. Did I miss something? Should I've loaded the 9.6 drivers with the F6 function during the OS install?

[mauro]

grits,

That is a terrible result in HD Tune for 2x60gb phoenix pro in raid0. I am pretty sure it has to do with the "roller coaster" issue.

You can download intel RST 10.0.0.1046 FINAL (not beta) here:
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.htm

Just find the 10.0.0.1046 version and click the download buttom.
Intel didn't put this driver into their main webpage yet.
This are the fastest RST from intel. You should see an improvement BUT, I don't think that "roller coaster" issue will go away.

[Betao]

One of the funny things is that seems that the drive needs some momentum to reach it?s peak. Starts at 150/160MBs to climb to 2000MB+ and run at 225MB before a dramatic dive.
Perhaps some GSkill engineer could explain this behavior.

[mauro]

One of the funny things is that seems that the drive needs some momentum to reach it?s peak. Starts at 150/160MBs to climb to 2000MB+ and run at 225MB before a dramatic dive.
Perhaps some GSkill engineer could explain this behavior.

Yes. This is interesting too.
If you look at all the "roller coaster" HD Tune results posted here, at least the first 10% of the graph is capped to ~150MB/s.

[P_Dub_S]

Grits something is definitely wrong with your setup here's my bench with 2 Phoenix Pro 60GB FW 3.1 in RAID0 on a ICH10R controller 16KB stripe size it's a little under 50% full and the OS drive.

[G.SKILL]

Hi all

let me explain and show you some points.
before that, please check our website review note.
Special notes:

1. The benchmark results are done with a new drive. and the performance may slightly vary according to the system rig, OS version, and driver.

2. The rated speed is achieved by ATTO and IOmeter benchmark programs,


about the straight line

before install OS


install OS


only operate format


use parted magic erase


I know Intel won't drop so serious and I have already informed Sandforce many times, but they are totally different solution.
so we can't take their together comparison.
if you try my step and can't get nearly straight line.
please let me know.